Talk:Scandinavia

Since _culturally_ finland and iceland are part of Scandinavia, I redirected the page to Northern Europe. Hey, people: this is a _travel pages_ not a forum to have 4 different definition for Scandinavian cultural region. People want to get information to their travel, and as everyone knows, the most of the people in english speaking world thinks Iceland and Finland are part of Scandinavia - why do you want to make their travelling more complicated????

i searched under google the following: 'difference between danish and norwegian' and you wouldn't believe the pile of useless junk it came up with, but before i gave up your website came up with the simple, concise answer i needed. thanks again. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.178.229.15 (talk • contribs) 08:08, 14 August 2004 (EDT)

Danish has influenced Norwegian a lot for about 500 years between 1300-1800, when Norway was ruled under the Danish government. Danish has a few typical sound shifts, which Norwegian lacks (except for Danish borrowings) such as *p-*b, *t-*d, *k-*g etc, usually voicing of final consonants. The pronunciation is also quite different, whereas Danish pronunciation could be compared to English, and Norwegian to German, if you understand. Also, Norwegian has a lot of dialectal differences, which Danish generally lacks. But when written, Danish and Norwegian (particularly Bokmål) are very similar, that's true. 81.232.72.148 13:13, 26 Nov 2005 (EST)

You have larger experience that I, but I found having four different articles on five countries very confusing. In my opinion it's better to have one good article which cover all variations, subjects (and terminology) in one place, than spread among places.

Moreover, if you look at histories of these four articles, you can see that all of them shared same text content (in a bit different forms). This is confusing, chaotic and redundant (should traveller print all four articles?). -- JanSlupski

Can somebody tell why Finland and Iceland shouldn't be included here? Yes, in geographical terms, they are not part of Scandinavia, but they for sure share same cultural heritage than other countries mentioned (especially cultural heritage between Sweden and Finland), and its common in English language that Scandinavia actually means 'Nordic countries'. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.186.246.19 (talk • contribs) 16:55, 15 July 2006 (EDT)

I agree that having all these little region articles serves no purpose. Scandinavia should redirect to Northern Europe, and the term should be explained in the "Understand" section there. Jpatokal 20:42, 15 July 2006 (EDT)

Wikitravel is not a dictionary or encyclopedia, and our Wikitravel:Geographical hierarchy says that regions should not overlap. Northern Europe is a more useful region for the traveller than "Scandinavia", so that's the one we use, and the differences between the two are explained there. Jpatokal 06:22, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

United Kingdom is described as Northern Europe on its page, but on this page it isn't present. Is the UK northern european or not?

The map is the authoritative source -- it's not red there, so it's not. Jpatokal 16:14, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

Agree with Jpatokal - the regional breakdown for Europe has resulted from a lot of discussion, so any changes will need to be talked about first. Updating the United Kingdom article to note that it's in north-western Europe should hopefully resolve this inconsistency. -- Ryan 16:19, 26 September 2006 (EDT)

We Know! the two main authors on this are from Denmark and Finland respectively, so while I'm not saying we can't possibly be wrong, we are certainly aware of the nuances, and not ignorant outsiders. But most English speakers people don't give a rats ass about Scandinavians definition of Scandinavia, and a happy to follow the primary international definition which includes the Nordic countries minus Greenland. coincidentally better reference points - since we are in the travel business might be Lonely Planet, Rough guide and Frommers which all to some degree messes up the purist term as well.

And to quote your own source "Worldwide, casual and unofficial use of the term "Scandinavia" is a common reference to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, but also includes Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands." --Stefan (sertmann)Talk 15:58, 22 March 2009 (EDT)

By the definition used in the article (including Finland apart from Norway, Sweden and Denmark), the population is actually:

Norway: 4.7 million

Sweden: appr 9 million

Denmark: slightly more than 5 million

Finland: slightly more than 5 million

other states incl Greenland, Åland etc have small populations.

So the correct number is 24 million. Orcaborealis 12:10, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

See you've already changed it, but thanks for correcting it - must have been a typo from my part. --Stefan (sertmann)Talk 13:30, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

I was really disgusted with the inclusion of Finland as part of Scandinavia. If you ask an ordinary Finn about this, he/she will be adamant that Finland is NOT Scandinavian. Also, I corrected the paragraph regarding speed limits because the information on Finland was totally incorrect. Finally, I DELETED - yes, folks, DELETED - the sentences about how most natives disregard the speed limit. While that may be true for other countries, the majority of Finns obey the speed limit because the fines are a percentage of your paycheck. I really disliked the part about how people speed because they make a high salaries, so they don't worry about the fines. Finns make a comparatively low salary compared to Swedes and Norwegians, so such a comment is wholly inappropriate regarding Finland.

You are really doing people a disservice by providing inaccurate information. That is why I fixed it. This has been done with the best of intentions because your webpages are quite good otherwise.

I think we also need pictures of Iceland and the Faroe Islands, but what would be good showcases of those two countries? Iceland is probably best represented by volcanic activity, no? So is a Geyser? Lava? or the Blue Lagoon? most representative? Faroe Islands rings Sheeps, Puffins or Steep grassy hills ending into the sea, in my head, which should we look for?

As for food we have the whole Icelandic/Faroe tradition of eating sheep brains/heads and the Norwegian/Swedish tradition of eating rotten (or rather fermented) fish - Surströmming in Sweden and Rakfisk in Norway, which is all fairly unique to Scandinavia, but hmmm, pictures of this? --Stefan (sertmann)Talk 08:49, 20 May 2009 (EDT)

Eating sheep head is also a tradition in West Norway, in Norway this is called "smalahove". Nowaday it is not uncommon to invite friends for a smalahove-party. The heads are served with potatoes. It is normal to drink beer and aqavit to the heads. I found a picture of this at Wikimedia Commons. There I also found a picture of rakfisk. I have also uploaded my own picture of the geyser Strokkur. ViMy 18:38, 4 August 2009 (EDT)

Danish and German is not mutual intelligible, it may be academically, but unless someone has studied German they are not going to understand a word - and that's speaking from 29 years of practical experience. I vividly remember the frequent panic in people's eyes, whenever we had German callers at my old work. --Stefan (sertmann)talk 09:57, 20 February 2010 (EST)

They are Nordic, but not Scandinavian, although Icelandic is a Scandinavian language). Scandinavia consists only of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. --Oddeivind 04:47, 28 February 2011 (EST)

As the second line of the Wikipedia article on Scandinavia states, ". In common English usage, Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland are often grouped with Scandinavia." What we use here at Wikitravel is the common English usage. texugo 07:00, 28 February 2011 (EST)

The point is that the common English usage is WRONG! Wikitravel should not give people misinformation. It is also common that people say "America" when in fact they mean only one particular country (the USA), a fact that doesn´t mean that Brazil (an American country) is a part of the United States. Iceland and Finland is no more a part of Scandinavia than Brazil is a part of the United States! --Oddeivind 10:02, 28 February 2011 (EST)

Educating the English-speaking masses to change the way they speak is not really among our goals. I'd say it's fine to add a note in the Understand section explaining your point, but I'd say it's going to be an uphill battle to get this changed unless you have a real good suggestion for another way that countries in this given region are commonly referred to collectively. I think Scandinavia is about as good as we can come up with. Just have a look further up this page at previous users who have made the same point as you. texugo 10:31, 28 February 2011 (EST)

"The Nordic countries" is the correct term for these five countries, but another solution is to keep "Scandinavia" but to remove Finland and Iceland (but having a comment that these countries are often wrongly called Scandinavian among English-speaking users (mainly due to ignorance about the countries). --Oddeivind 10:38, 28 February 2011 (EST)

The first paragraph of Scandinavia#Understand already acknowledges the nuances between the terms. And this naming was fairly extensively discussed before anyway, please see this discussion and the other two discussions that are linked from there. – Vidimian 13:51, 28 February 2011 (EST)

Eastern Europe is defined as European Russia (Russia west of the Volga and Urals, which itself is an immense area), Ukraine, Byelorussia,
the Baltic states, Romania... this is smaller than Scandinavia? I don't think this is correct and someone needs to check on this and
change, if so. Scandinavia is most likely the second largest region in Europe proper, whether one counts Finland (which IS geographically and in most
ways culturally part of Scandinavia) and Iceland or not.

BTW, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic are not Eastern Europe. They are part of Central Europe.